Tag Archives: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

Come to the Edge: A Love Story by Christina Haag (Spiegel & Grau, $15.00, 276 pages)

“…there are those you love no matter how much they hurt you, no matter how many years have passed since you felt them in the morning. I did not know how long it would take to get over such a love…”

The hardbound release of Come to the Edge bore the subtitle, A Memoir. The re-release has what is perhaps a more appropriate subtitle, A Love Story. This is a grand telling of a love affair between a young man and a young woman that ran for five years; one that did not end in marriage and a happily ever after existence.

The woman was the actress Christina Haag and the man was the son of the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, Jr. Young love is hard enough as it is, but consider the plight of a female whose boyfriend is one of the best-known people on the planet. Eric Pooley of Time Magazine was to write that, “Kennedy had to work through (questions of identity and self-image) while trapped inside a brightly lit media fun house with distorted mirrors all around.”

Early on, the love story had the makings of a fairy tale, with a young ambitious woman (Haag) – an extrovert since childhood – meeting America’s prince (JFK, Jr.) in Manhattan. And – oh, yes – Haag was in some sense a younger version of John’s mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. John was to say to Christina, “You sound like my mother…”; while Mrs. Onassis was to tell her, “I was watching you earlier – you reminded me of me.”

Suffice it to say that we don’t often learn of the details of private loves and losses, other than in works of fiction or in the biographies of prominent Hollywood actors but Haag is very transparent here about what happened – the good and the bad. At one point she tells us that, “I saw myself growing old with him.” Later she explains that their falling apart was not the stuff of great drama, their relationship (which was first a long-term friendship before it became a romance) simply slowly faded-out and away.

Kennedy comes off in this telling as a very likeable young man, one who was constantly attempting to find himself while getting ever closer to the line between safety and recklessness. What’s lacking is a sense of who he really was – perhaps he had not matured enough in Haag’s presence for her to define this. As an aside, it was in reading the novel One Day and encountering the character of Dexter Mayhew that I wondered if this was a glimpse of JFK, Jr. Consider: “There was something feline about him.” “…he had the knack of being perpetually posed for a photograph.” “Clearly he knew he was being looked at…” And we know that Dexter was to say about himself, “Everyone likes me. It’s my curse.”

So perhaps John Kennedy, Jr. had to struggle with a different type of curse during his lifetime – the curse of being one of the world’s favorite sons, greeted with adoration and adulation (and lust), even when he wasn’t quite sure he’d done enough to earn it. Thanks to Haag, the reader does come to know his mother, Mrs. Onassis, quite well. The former First Lady comes across as a woman of grace, charm, dignity and loyalty. Not all of the Kennedys are portrayed in such a positive light, but then this adds a sense of honesty and directness to the account.

“I had the sense that brokenness meant approach and that beauty was something mixed of shadow and decay. That it was made, in part, from the pieces of the past and the things that are left behind.”

Haag’s prose is distinct and memorable as she tells us about a five-year love affair with a man who married another, and who then – like his father – died all too young. This memoir is just the right length. And there’s another true story waiting in the wings to be told by this actress (another memoir). That will be the story of her battle to survive breast cancer. Based on the compassionate nature of this account, it will be one to buy.

It would seem, at first blush, that a book reviewer needs only to read the book in question and then write-up his or her thoughts. Sometimes it is just this simple. However, I’ve found that some unexpected issues – almost moral in nature – arise from time to time. Let me go over a few of those here with you.

The Twin Books

Sometimes two books, fiction or nonfiction, are released at the same time and contain virtually identical content. It may be that both books are biographies of a former First Lady or of a 70-year-old folk rock singer… It may be that both novels tell a story that is the same from start to finish. How does a reviewer handle this? Is it relevant? I think it is, but then how is the reviewer to make use of this factor?

Do both books get downgraded due to a lack of originality, or does one accept that this is simply what happens in life (independent and spontaneous creation)? If two books are almost the same, does this not beg for a comparative review – a determination of which is better (like DVD versus Blu-ray)? And doesn’t this mean that one of the two must be selected as the winner, and the other as the loser?

Should a reviewer ever express a suspicion that one writer may have copied the other – or at least cribbed an idea from the other? Or should all of this be put aside, so that the reviewer is – in effect – placing his hands over his eyes, ears and mouth like a monkey?

The Shooting Star

Let’s say that the reviewer has a favorite author and is very much looking forward to reading this writer’s latest work (in our example, a novel). For illustrative purposes, I will use one of my favorites, Pat Conroy. If I’ve loved every one of his novels and then I find that his latest release is a dog, what do I do? Or, rather, what should I do? Do I compensate for this by stating that every author is going to have a down period (a compensation for a lifetime of achievement), or should I slam him since I know full well that he’s capable of doing better than this?

Is a talented author to be given a pass when he delivers something less than his usual best, or should the reviewer explicitly make the case that this author has gotten lazy – or something worse?

Pass/Fail

Some less-established authors may have only published a couple of novels. I’ve found instances where one of the two is near-perfection (more often the debut novel), while the sophomore effort pales by comparison. Is this something that should be mentioned in a review of the more recent release, or is it outside the bounds of propriety and relevance? Is it acceptable for the reviewer to write something like, “While this new novel is not up to the standards of the author’s first, he clearly has demonstrated the ability to produce an impressive product the next time around.”

Does the average book review reader really care about whether the author is getting stronger or weaker, or does that reader simply want to know whether this book is worth purchasing?

The Same Thing, Over and Over

There are a few authors who write a great story – the sole problem being that they’re known for writing the same story, the same novel over and over again. In one recent case, a publisher stated that a very successful author’s new novel was “completely new and different,” as if to apologize for all of the almost-photocopied novels (with similar cover images) that preceded it. Should the reviewer judge each and every novel with the almost-same plot and resolution on its own merits – on “all fours” as law professors state, or is it justifiable to critique the author’s novels for a lack of originality?

If you love a particular author whose books happen to be very similar, does it bother you or is it something that you’re able to put aside – like knowing that some rock bands are continuously original while others are not?

The End

If you happen to know the answers to these questions, please feel free to let me know. In the interim, I will continue to stumble along not quite knowing (in the words of the immortal Van Morrison) “what is worst or what is best.”

Joseph Arellano

Pictured – Jackie as Editor: The Literary Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis by Greg Lawrence (Thomas Dunne Books, $25.99, 322 pages). “The vision Jackie brought into editing embraced the recognition that every life has its own riches and meaning, waiting to be revealed by what she called ‘the hard work of writing.'”